1 Batzen

Vaud had only been a sovereign canton since 1803, when Napoleon's Act of Mediation reorganized the Helvetic Republic and freed it from Bernese dominance after nearly two centuries of subjugation. This Batzen was struck across nearly a decade of that early independence, a period when Swiss cantonal minting remained fragmented — each canton still issuing its own coinage before federal centralization swept the system away with the 1850 Federal Coinage Act. The billon alloy, barely a sixth silver, reflects the chronic shortage of specie that plagued smaller cantons throughout the post-Napoleonic period.